The GOP is built on two core tenets — small government and big
defense spending — and for decades, the two ideas co-existed
peacefully. Republicans wanted to cut the federal budget —
everywhere except the Pentagon. No more.

That sort of take confuses rhetoric and reality in two equal
and opposite ways. First it assumes that the Republican Party,
especially when it holds the White House, actually works to cut
spending. That's just not true.

As Reason columnist and Mercatus Center
policy analyst Veronique de Rugy documented last fall, when you
look at inflation-adjusted per-capita outlays going back to Jimmy
Carter, it turns out
that a Republican in the White House means spending more, not
less, money. Note especially what happened under George W. Bush,
who had a GOP Congress until 2007. Spending cranked up under him
across the board, only slowing briefly when the Democrats took the
House and the Senate late in his second term. At the very end of
his second term, Bush rammed through TARP and various other massive
outlays that were then bumped even higher by Barack Obama's
stimulus spending. Bush increased defense spending by about 70
percent, but he also increased Medicare and Medicaid by 75 percent,
and non-defense discretionary spending by 55 percent. Look
it up and be appalled.

There's a pattern that I recently christened "the Ziggurat
of Doom": Spending ratchets up under Republican presidents and then
the gains are consolidated by Democratic leaders. Real spending
under Carter and Clinton was basically flat. After an
initial giant leap at the start of Obama's tenure (a leap up that
included some of the last-minute Bush hikes), spending has (so far)
been basically flat. To be sure, the federal government's inability
to produce a budget for going-on-four-years has surely stymied
Obama's repeatedly stated desire to increase annual spending
by
$2 trillion over the next decade. The cheapskate
Republicans - judging from Rep. Paul Ryan's plan - only want to
increase it by $1 trillion over the next 10 years. Because well,
you know, trillion-dollar deficits really shouldn't mean you have
to hold spending down at all. But the failure to pass a budget
can't be laid at the Republicans' feet. Most of the blame rests
with the Democratically controlled Senate, which hasn't produced a
budget proposal (as required by law) for years.

If Politico simply confuses
rhetoric for reality when it comes to the GOP's dedication to
"small government," it also fails to check the record on how the
Gingrich Congress balanced the budget back in the 1990s. It
certainly didn't do it by actually increasing defense spending,
that's for sure. Defense cuts - what was called the "peace
dividend" back in the 1990s - were central to controlling spending
during the Clinton presidency. The cuts began under George H.W.
Bush and continued throughout the Cllinton years, even after the
GOP had gained control of both houses of Congress. Clinton spent
most of his first two years in power trying to push through a
national health-care plan. Maybe that preoccupied him and the GOP
so much they forgot how to spend money on other stuff. In terms of
inflation-adjusted spending on national defense, the U.S. was
spending about 8 percent less in 2001 than it had spent in 1994
(go
to Table 8.8 on page 178). Over the same period, total federal
spending increased by about 10 percent. The point is that
a GOP Congress readily signed off on reductions in defense spending
under Clinton.

One of the basic problems with
today's political discourse is that each of the major parties is
pretending to be that which it is not. As the Politico story shows,
the parties are helped along in this delusional masquerade by the
media. The Republicans wrap themselves in the mantle of government
cutters who only make an exception for robust national defense (and
recall that throughout the 1990s, they also channeled their inner
Robert Tafts, routinely questioning President Bill Clinton's
promiscuous
use of American forces every bit as much as his promiscuous use
of interns). The Democrats are supposedly ready to cut spending on
guns so they can jack up spending on social programs and other
giveaways. Neither of these things is remotely true, it turns out,
with the result that each party is talking past the other and, more
importantly, the American people.

Defense spending - currently about 20 percent of the federal
budget - is going to be cut for various reasons. First and
foremost, it's a huge pot of money that is appropriated every year,
so it's more vulnerable than the other big-ticket entitlement items
such as Medicare and Medicaid. Second, it has risen dramatically
over the past dozen years and the wars that have goosed its levels
are coming to an unlamented end. (Let's leave aside that the
much-heralded Obama withdrawal from Iraq followed the exact
timetable put forth by the Bush administration and over the
loud attempts by outgoing Defense Secretary Leon Panetta to
keep us there longer. Or that Panetta, who has attacked any cuts to
military spending via sequestration, has also called for prolonging our
presence in Afghanistan.)

From a limited-government angle, it's always good news to read
stories about spending cuts, but the biggest twist to
the Politico story isn't that it's Republicans who are calling
for defense cuts but that they are actually pushing for spending
cuts in the first place. When you factor in all the costs related
to defending the country, the U.S. spent something like $928
billion in 2012 (this includes a base defense budget $535 billion
plus all other costs attributable to related functions). Defense
spending, unlike, say, Medicare or Medicaid, shouldn't
automatically scale up - that is, there in no inherent reason that
defending 300 million Americans should cost more than defending 200
million. Which is one of the reasons why pollster Scott Rasmussen
has found a large majority of Americans are ready and willing to
cut defense spending. (Read
more here).

If past if prologue, of course the GOP is ready and willing to
cut defense spending. Indeed, the only question left is whether the
Democrats will go along with it.

Nick Gillespie is the editor at large of Reason and the co-author, with Matt Welch, of The Declaration of Independents: How Libertarian Politics Can Fix What's Wrong With America (2011/2012).

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As a keep saying, the first thing that needs to be cut is the US
commitment to defend half the countries of the world from the other
half. It could be argued that we don’t spend enough now on
‘defense’ since our political “leaders” have spent the last 60
years running around the world handing out defense commitments

Once you stop being committed to defending half the world then
cutting defense spending is much easier.

I'd settle for S. Korea and Western Europe (mostly Germany -
leave Landstuhl and Ramstein, close the rest down, I mean,
Hohenfels, really?!) getting ramped down and out. Two big expenses
for little to no return.

The rate of spending increased slowed for a couple of years in
Bush's second term. In fact, when adjusted for inflation, spending
was flat in 2006 and 2007. Go to page 27 in the OMB's Historical
tables:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/site.....s/hist.pdf

As I note in the piece, spending picked up again in 2007 and
2008, and really cranked up in 2009, when both Bush and Obama
played a role in boosting outlays.

"Bush increased defense spending by about 70 percent, but he
also increased Medicare and Medicaid by 75 percent, and non-defense
discretionary spending by 55 percent. Look it up and be
appalled."

You know who I blame?

I blame the Republican rank and file. I blame the people who
continued to support the Bush Administration--because Kerry would
have been worse. I blame the average Republican voter, who
continued to support Bush--even after the prescription drug
benefit--out of fear that Al Qaeda was gonna take over America and
make Jennifer wear a burka.

If you're one of the people who continued to support Bush after
his first two years in office, then there's no reason to blame
Dubya, or Boehner, or anyone else for all that spending. The blame
belongs to you.

No. It was about Federal support of private charities. Mo'
Federal money.

We also have to remember the 'times' when Bush took office. The
geniuses at OMB had projected surpluses forever, never mind that
even as they were making those predictions the NASDAQ was in free
fall. The closest thing to a spending cut talked about a dozen
years ago was Gore's social security 'lock box'....which was just
spin for the gullible.

Obama's spending is flat, but you must note that the one-time
expenditure of TARP in 2008 is now considered part of the annual
bottom line. It looks like he cut spending outlays via taking
advantage of the 2008 spending levels and trimming a tad bit.

This is why the Senate cannot produce a budget - a new baseline
gets established and somebody has to own up for putting the
stimulus into the baseline.

JUST KIDDING!!! Nobody has to own up to anything. It's politics
so the 'Teams' will confuse things as best they can and where there
is clarity the media will jump in to scramble things up some more.
In two years everyone will be swearing up and down that the
stimulus never even happened.